1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a plaque that is used by a user to display a document or certificate, and particularly to a e-paper based solution wherein a digital plaque makes it possible to display one of a collection of documents, transcripts, licenses, achievement awards, etc.
2. Related Art
Plaques are often used for employee recognition. Plaques can be ordered on the Internet and a user can select a type of frame—word, metal, plastic, etc. The user can upload a customized artwork and photos and they get engraved on the plaques ordered. Quite often, an employee hangs several plaques on the walls of his workspace. In addition, some users display the plaques on their desk at work. Quite often employees run out of space and cannot display new ones on the walls or the desks. Plaques are provided to employees of a company to commemorate an event, to appreciate work done, etc. Plaques are provided when patents are issued, and for graduation too. Quite often employees run out of space to display the plaques provided to them.
Users sometimes have information engraved on a plaque that later on becomes outdated. Users have no way to modify the plaques and they have to order new ones at considerable expense. Outdated plaques are usually discarded and new ones ordered. Often users need to duplicate or copy the information available on a plaque. They often use a photocopier to make a copy, which usually does not look clean or clear when photocopied.
A typical dentists office displays over 20 plaques of various kinds in the waiting room, some of them displaying a license to operate, other displaying educational certificates, some displaying testimonials, etc. Often, rearranging these plaques, especially when new ones have to be added, is a headache. Just shuffling the order of display is a chore. Even changing the order in which plaques are arranged is a chore. When an update to a document displayed is received, replacing the old one with a new one is a headache requiring over 30 minutes of work.
Users typically forget when their license to operate a business expires. The plaques fail to remind them of these expiry dates. Inventors who frame their patents also often forget to pay the maintenance fees due, and end up having their patents abandoned. They also forget when their patents expire, etc.
Students get transcripts from their schools/colleges and they would want to frame them and put them up on a wall. When they get a more recent/updated transcript, they often take it down, replace the old document with the new one, and nail them back on a wall. This process is laborious and not easy for the elderly. Professionals such as doctors and engineers acquire a license to operate, and they often put them up on a wall as a plaque. However, when these licenses are renewed, they need to get new plaques made, at considerable expense of money and time, to put them up on a wall in their offices. Again, this activity is time consuming and expensive.
Some writers who get a book published often get a plaque made of their book cover and display the plaque. When a new version/edition of the book is subsequently released, the old plaque becomes obsolete and the writers get new plaques made to replace older ones, at some expense of time and money. This is inconvenient and there is a need to display updated/recent editions for book covers in more convenient methods.
Often people make a poster or a plaque that also comprises a photo of one or more individuals, such as a school graduation photo of a high school student. Years later, that student will have forgotten who his friends are in that photo, and will have lost touch with them. There is no easy way today to determine who those various friends are and what they are currently doing, or where they live, without going through considerable time and expense to determine that information.
Sometimes inventors apply for a patent and get a plaque made when they get a patent granted (or when they apply for it), and put the plaque on a wall in their office. The patents need maintenance fees to be paid periodically, and the inventors have no easy way to determine when these fees are due, and some of these patents get abandoned. Thus, there is a need to determine/display the various status of a patent or a patent application so that an inventor can act upon it, and there is no easy way today to do that currently, even though an inventor can put up a plaque that might remind him of the need to check the status once in a while by calling into the patent office (such as USPTO) or searching online.
Quite often people frame a old photo that shows faces of multiple individuals. Years later, a user might want to determine what those individuals in the photo are currently doing, or even try to remember their names or their relationships to his own life. If the user has very little recollection of his friends, then there is no easy way for him to determine their names, their current profiles or their whereabouts. Thus the user has no way to get in touch with those individuals.
In most companies, rewarding hard working employees is a great way to keep them motivated and feeling valued in the workplace. Companies provide numerous products perfectly geared towards accomplishing this mission, including personalized corporate awards and gifts, wooden, acrylic, and crystal plaques, star trophies and paperweights, desk name plates, globe awards, clocks, wine box sets, and barbeque sets. These are great gifts to give employees, such as to reward individuals who have met personal or corporate set goals, or to recognize certain workers whose accomplishments stand out among the other workers. Personalization makes them a greatly appreciated gift that any employee will treasure forever. However, information engraved, printed or otherwise displayed on traditional gifts cannot be updated, changed, revised. This is sometimes a problem.
In 2012, some news on e-Paper had been announced in a couple of newspapers. E-Paper is an application that can use several alternative technologies, such as electrophoretic, cholesteric LCD, electrochromic and nematic bistable LCD. These different technologies bring different advantages and drawbacks in terms of their features and their manufacture. Like OLEDs, e-paper is light in weight and has even lower power requirements. The characteristics of ultra-thinness and flexibility really make e-paper different to current displays. E-paper is a portable, reusable storage and display medium, typically thin and flexible. It is literally the electronic substitution for the printed page. Typically it reproduces mainly static text, usually monochrome, with high flexibility of the whole screen so ultimately it may even be folded or rolled like traditional paper. This implies being produced as a thin film, rather than as a panel, like LCD or plasma FPDs. However, e-paper is a technology in need of a solution. There are no products in the market currently. Researchers have not yet figured out how to use them, or what to use them for.
These and other limitations and deficiencies associated with the related art may be more fully appreciated by those skilled in the art after comparing such related art with various aspects of the present invention as set forth herein with reference to the figures.